


like the game with toy blocks

by Kirstein_and_Arlert



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-03 00:25:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4079587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirstein_and_Arlert/pseuds/Kirstein_and_Arlert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bobbi is a just a scientist, until she's not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like the game with toy blocks

**Author's Note:**

> Short, slightly disjoined and with a bit of a strange format, but I felt like I needed to get it down in a doc before I forgot the idea.
> 
> Title from the English translation of Bauklotze by Mika Kobayashi.

She is in her early twenties, and people like say _genius_ in hushed voices when Bobbi passes by. Sometimes she hears _bright future_ and _trailblazer_ , but she ignores them. Doctor Calvin taught her years ago that there is nothing beautiful in doing things to please others.

Bobbi devotes her graduate thesis to super soldier serum, and the scientific community erupts.

She is controversial or brilliant, depending on whom anyone asks, and she stops replying to emails offering jobs and research after a week.

After two weeks, Bobbi meets Nick Fury. He and Doctor Calvin give her an impossible opportunity.

 

 

 

Bobbi recreates the original super soldier serum

(it ran in Steve Rogers’ blood, runs through her mind on a loop as she works, it ran in Steve Rogers’ blood and helped to create a hero)

Bobbi recreates the original super soldier serum.

She does the impossible.

(and no one will ever know, Sallis used to complain, and sometimes Bobbi wonders why that doesn’t bother her, why the lack of recognition means so much less to her than the work itself)

She almost dies.

(her hand slips in her own blood, but she grabs the broken burette and she already knows that Paul is dead the moment that the glass slices his throat open)

She saves a life.

(blood on her hand, fingers slipping as she tries to depress the plunger, Fortune choking on his own blood, Paul Allen dead by her own hand six feet away, and maybe she cries when he dies, and maybe she cries when he gasps several minutes later when he should never make another sound)

Nick Fury shakes her hand and looks at her like she’s something he can’t puzzle out.

 

 

 

Bobbi asks _Why am I here?_  

Fury’s shoulders lift in a small shrug.   _You tell me, Doctor Morse._

_You tell me._

 

 

 

Bobbi joins SHIELD because it feels like the right thing to do.

She apologises to Doctor Calvin for disappointing her. She apologises to Dominic Fortune for doing something that might mean he dies – _don’t worry, kid, if I die because you’re not there to save me, I’ll just haunt you_.

Doctor Calvin says, _you will never disappoint me_ , and straightens the collar of Bobbi’s shirt. It doesn’t need straightening.

Doctor Calvin says, _you go and get them_.

 

 

 

People take to saying _scientist_ like it’s an insult.

Bobbi learns to show her teeth when she smiles, all veiled threats and false reassurance in one gesture.

She trains with Sharon, the only other person whose training is followed by disdainful whispers. _Legacy_ , they call her with a sneer, and Bobbi echoes it, but she makes it sound as impressive as she should.

She says, _no one’s going to say we don’t belong here because we’re different._

She says, _no one’s going to tell us we’re less than them because of who we are or who we were._

She says, _let’s show them what a real SHIELD agent is like._

 

 

 

They come top in every class, from hand to hand combat to undercover work, trading the first and seconds slots between themselves.

(she fights Romanoff in the final test, and she can feel in it Romanoff’s body when Bobbi gets her feet under her, and Romanoff knows that she’s already lost, because height advantage plus utilising it equals _you’re screwed_ , and Bobbi grins when Romanoff hits the mat)

Masters says, _they’re gonna kill you both_ , the night before the final test.

Romanoff says, _they can try_.

(Romanoff says, _call me Natasha_ )

 

 

 

Bobbi passes the final test.

(there is blood in her hair and under her fingernails, three people tried to kill her and she killed them all, and maybe her arm is broken in three places, she hasn’t had time to check since she almost fell off the cliff)

She passes the final test, and Sharon is at her side in seconds, yelling for SHIELD’s doctors to _get your asses over here unless you want to lose them!_

 

 

 

This is what Bobbi does not think about

\- Slade with the knife his hand, murder in his eyes, and the way his body looked as he fell from the balcony

\- The other student whose name she never bothered to learn, and the look of shock on her face when Bobbi found her body, as if she never saw it coming

\- Two dead men, one she thought was her friend, and one she always knew saw her as competition, both dead because they tried to kill her.

\- Too many spaces (more than any other year) as she and Sharon graduate, first and second in their year, and the way that an agent called Garrett keeps staring at them both when Fury names her the _Mockingbird_.

\- The way she hears her mother scream when one of Fury’s subordinates tells her mother that she is dead ( a lab accident, a nice, believable lie)

 

 

 

The first time Bobbi almost dies, someone says, _Fury sure created something strange with you, didn’t he?_

Bobbi says, _Fury didn’t create me_.

(blood on the floor and blood on her hands, dead men, and people alive because of her, and she gets it now, she gets it because her hands never shook and she never cried over a dead man who tried to kill her, and she knows that Fury hadn’t expected that, not in a scientist, not in someone soft who spent all her time in labs)

_I was already me._

(because she grabbed the broken burette and took a life, because she grabbed the syringe and took a chance)

_He just gave me a name for it_.

(she is SHIELD, she is SHIELD until she dies, and maybe even after because she already has a death certificate somewhere that says she died due to respiratory failure, and maybe she’ll die because of SHIELD, someone who wants to get her out of the way, or maybe she’ll die to save SHIELD)

 

 


End file.
